


White Wedding Day

by Verlaine



Category: The Professionals
Genre: Episode Related, Gen, death story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-29
Updated: 2010-08-29
Packaged: 2017-10-11 08:01:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/110187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verlaine/pseuds/Verlaine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Tommy's a lousy thing to be, he's a killer." Bodie to Doyle, in <em>Heroes</em></p><p>The life and times of Shotgun Tommy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White Wedding Day

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the Discovered in a LiveJournal challenge: "wedding".
> 
> Song lyrics from "White Wedding Day", by Billy Idol.

White Wedding Day  
by Verlaine

_There is nothin' fair in this world._

Before he was Shotgun Tommy, he was Tom McKay, private first class. Joining the army hadn't been due to any grand patriotic fervour; he'd simply accepted it as the easiest way out for a kid who'd barely scraped through his eleven-plus and whose dad's idea of providing for the family was not to have spent his entire pay packet down the boozer by the middle of the week.

He didn't mind the army, not like some. He was fed and clothed, and there was hot water to wash, all he wanted. The work was no harder than some he'd done, and while the sergeant could yell louder than his dad, he couldn't hit nearly as hard.

They sent him to Belfast.

For most of them, it was a gateway to a bewildering hell. Decent men for the most part, used to seeing themselves on the side of right, they couldn't get used to the hatred directed at them from all sides. The constant tension, the grind of never being certain who the real enemy was, drove men closer to the edge than they'd thought they could get.

Tom loved it. For him the bombs and the ambushes and the occasional snipers were proof there was some kind of real life in the world. He didn't even mind the kids throwing rocks and bottles, the very helplessness of the anger in it that drove most of the others spare. There was colour in this place—green and orange, all run through with bright splashes of scarlet—that was like a drug after a life spent in the grey and black of streets still grimed with coal dust a generation after the mining was done. His mates thought he was mad, and sometimes he wondered if they might not be right.

And then there was a girl.

The commanders warned them, everybody warned them, and they were right: any girl who was willing to get friendly was almost certainly an agent for one side or the other, and had nothing in mind except to get a soldier somewhere off guard where her mates could kill him or torture him for information. It made no difference. Young men, cooped up for weeks, living on the hair-trigger of death every moment they were outside their barracks, built up a sexual hunger that no amount of warning could tamp down.

Tom was fairly sure she wasn't a whore, waffled back and forth on whether she was an agent, and if so, for whom. It didn't matter. The danger was an aphrodisiac he couldn't resist. It made all the colours even brighter, every edge sharper, every sound clearer. He lived for those moments—not so much the being with her as the getting to her, the risk, the knowledge that every time might be the time that it all came crashing down.

He thought about it a lot. Thought about why he risked his life for some rushed uncomfortable sex with a not-terribly-pretty girl he really knew nothing about. In the end he decided it was love. The kind of love other people might have trouble understanding, but love all the same. If his love came with a background of gunsmoke and cordite, well, what was it to anyone else?

Yet for all that, Tom was careful. He may have been randy, but he wasn't stupid. He took every precaution that his mates whispered about in the barracks, and then made up some new ones. It even worked, for a while. But he had to be superhumanly careful every time, and the other side only had to get lucky once.

The tarring and feathering alone didn't kill her, though the scarring would have been bad enough she might not have thanked anybody who saved her. But one of them kicked her in the stomach at the end, and she bled out, lying there in the gutter. People must have seen it, must have heard—half covered in boiling pitch, she'd have screamed her lungs out—but not one lace curtain so much as twitched. It wasn't until the milkman clattered round at dawn and caught the stench of the congealed pool of tar and blood that someone finally called for help.

The autopsy report said she'd been three months along.

Tom wasn't supposed to see it, wasn't supposed to know anything about it at all. But where before his feelings had made him careful, lack of them soon made him reckless. He discovered that when you truly didn't give a shit what happened to you, you could get away with a lot. There were no nerves to make him hesitate at the wrong moment, no second thoughts to distract him. He needed to know what his love had cost. A ghost whisked in and out of the surgeon's office, and left its human side behind.

But single-minded emptiness did lead to a certain kind of blindness. They caught him half a mile from the gate, loaded down with enough weapons and explosives to destroy half a city block. He never told them where he'd been planning to go, who he was going after. Never let on that he'd had no idea himself. All he'd been focused on was finding something large enough to match the void inside him.

They told Tom she'd been a plant, had to be, to spend so long softening him up. Told him there was no way to prove the kid was even his. Threatened court-martial, prison, disgrace. Let him off in the end with a discharge that was technically honourable, provided nobody read the fine print.

He put the ring he'd bought her into his pocket and went back to England.

**

_There is nothin' safe in this world._

"He's a bloody psychopath!"

Shotgun Tommy, waiting in the uncomfortable chair by Betty's desk, saw her wince from the corner of his eye as the voice in Cowley's office carried through the door. Doyle, probably, who was never shy about calling a spade a spade, even in front of the Old Man. (Bodie might have the gall, but Doyle had the balls in that partnership, Tommy had decided at first glance.) He flashed Betty a quick grin, and tiptoed over to the door, laying his ear against the wood in a parody of clandestine listening. Betty waved both hands vigorously, beckoning him away and pointing at the chair with increasing emphasis. He shook his head and shrugged, miming lack of understanding, and then closed his eyes, tuning in to the conversation.

"Do you really think I'd have brought McKay on board if he was unstable?" Cowley.

"Yeah." That was Bodie, sounding calm and a little amused, as if having a nutter on the squad was just another interesting diversion from the daily routine.

"He deliberately drew fire." That was Doyle again, too loud, too harsh.

"An unorthodox tactic perhaps, but it worked. Did you think you'd be out throwing rose petals with the lassies on assignments like these?"

"There's a difference between unorthodox and bloody stupid. If it hadn't worked, the whole lot of them would have got away, and the rest of us couldn't have done a thing about it."

"And do you concur with that assessment, Bodie?"

"He broke position. Without warning anyone else." The military quick snap of a report replaced the languid amusement. "Doyle's right. Against anyone with training, that little lark would have got Tommy killed, and maybe Doyle and me as well. It worked because they were practically pissing themselves with fright anyway, and so they assumed he knew what he was doing. We won't always be up against someone that stupid."

"And what would you have suggested as an alternative?"

"Stick with the plan," Doyle snapped, at the same moment as Bodie said, "Co-ordinate the attack." There was a moment of silence, and then Doyle went on: "Either one. But going off on his own was the worst of all alternatives."

"Except that it worked," Cowley responded dryly.

"This time." There was a trace of scouse coming through in Bodie's voice now, a sure sign of tight-held anger. "But you can't run this mob on luck. Sir."

"I'll take that under consideration. You're dismissed."

Tommy light-footed it back across the room, and when the door opened to release Bodie and Doyle on the world, he was sprawled in the chair, legs outstretched, looking like a man who'd never contemplated listening at a door in his life.

It didn't fool either of them.

He got to his feet as Bodie approached, and found he didn't much care for the feeling of being measured by that dark silent menace. They stood for a moment, toe to toe, and for the first time Tommy assessed Bodie as a genuine threat. Left to himself he was dangerous enough, but with Doyle, for Doyle—not just deadly but purposefully deadly.

A wolf, not precisely tamed but focused. A fine-honed blade, tempered for the first time with responsibility.

"If you two are done pissing on each other's shoes?" Doyle said silkily. He'd moved so he was off to Tommy's right, exactly the position to take out his knees.

Tommy grinned at them both, letting all the emptiness inside show clearly for one moment, and then dropped his arse in the chair and stretched to carelessly hook his elbows across the back. Wide-open, defenceless, and completely indifferent to whatever they chose to do.

Amused, he watched them trade one look, and then another, and then almost in unison turn and stride out.

"What on earth—?" Betty said, clearly puzzled, as the door swung shut behind them.

"Marriage made in heaven," Tommy said, and laughed.

**

_And there's nothin' sure in this world._

"But outside of that, the honeymoon was fine."

Tommy didn't join in the general groans and hooting. He knew Bodie was playing to the crowd, drawing fire. They were all on edge, simmering with anger at having been outplayed. Gathering up the bodies of the people they were supposed to protect didn't sit well with any of them. There had already been a few snarling words exchanged, fists clenched, curses muttered and only barely let pass.

Bodie's outrageous comment broke the tension, gave everyone a way to let off steam at something safe. Nobody else could have got away with it. If Tommy had said it, everyone would have looked away, pretended not to hear. He didn't blame them. Most of them wouldn't have been consciously aware of the difference between himself and Bodie, but their survival instincts were honed keenly enough to sense it at some level and be wary. A remark like that from Tommy would have left them wondering how safe it was to laugh.

From across the room, he caught Doyle's gaze on him. Doyle knew. Doyle had his hand under his jacket and a warning clear in those hard green eyes. If Tommy objected to Bodie's joke, he'd deal with Doyle first.

Tommy looked at Bodie, smirking and preening in the attention, but underneath it watchful, the sergeant keeping an eye on his troops for signs of trouble. Those who thought Bodie a callous bastard had never seen him deal with men for whom he felt responsible.

Tommy sighed, gave Doyle a quick nod, chuckled at the sudden confused look. They had their strengths, and he had his. As he slipped out the door, he was already thinking ahead to the armoury, wondering which of those strengths would be the most useful.

**

_And there's nothin' pure in this world._

Tommy had no reason to go to the hospital. There were other agents on guard, as there were on all the surviving witnesses, and he had his own assignment. He was even surprised by his curiosity. After all, death was death, and being shot while on honeymoon was no better or worse than any other.

He'd expected the girl to be pale and in pain, but conscious. A shoulder wound might hurt like the devil, especially to someone unused to the hard edges of life, but it wouldn't do any lasting harm. The scar would be a bit of a shock for her next boyfriend, but that should be the worst of it.

But it turned out she was still in critical care and when he put his head round the edge of the door, Tommy was startled to see two nurses, one hooking up an intravenous drip, the other monitoring some piece of equipment that beeped at steady intervals. A grey-haired man jammed into the corner by the bed looked near tears as he held her good hand and tried to soothe her.

"What's gone wrong?" Tommy said quietly as he approached the bed.

One of the nurses glanced up. "Who are you?" Her hand hovered over the button, ready to summon security.

He flashed his identification card absently, eyes still fixed on the bed. The girl's face was flushed, her eyes open but unseeing.

"What's wrong with her?" he repeated.

"Infection." It was the man who answered. The nurse had barely glanced at his card, too busy with the needle.

"Infection?" Tommy looked down again. "But it's only a shoulder wound."

"She fell into that wretched pond, didn't she? Left her lying in that mucky water for ages until they thought it was safe to move her, and by that time it had soaked her through." His voice wavered. "They're saying the penicillin isn't working, they need something stronger."

"Christ." Tommy stretched out his hand and felt the heat pouring off her skin. Burning out from inside, he thought. But better that than empty grey numbness. Better to get it over with and let them both be buried in the same grave. Of its own volition, his hand moved toward the intravenous line.

"Here, what're you doing?" A sharp voice cut through the muted bustle around him. The old man's hand gripped his wrist just as his fingers closed on the cool plastic tubing. "You're no doctor! Who are you?"

Tommy didn't even look at the nurse he shouldered aside.

"One of the stupid bastards who was too slow to save her."

He only realised when he crashed through the door into the street that he'd run all the way down the stairs from the ward.

**

_It's a nice day for a white wedding._

It's a wedding of flesh and death, and Tommy is more than happy to be the best man. After all, grooms can sometimes be most reluctant to meet their brides when the moment finally comes, and it's his job to take them that final step, make sure they march up the aisle in style.

It's also his duty as groomsman to make sure that the right marriage is celebrated, for death can be a fickle bitch. His own courtship of her has so far been fruitless, but he still has hopes. He's not about to let Bodie or Doyle, ladies' men though they are, pip him at the post. They've got each other, after all, and can damn well do without a threesome for once.

A grenade launcher might have been a tad extravagant as a courting gift, but a lady of taste and refinement is entitled to the best.

At first he thinks that he has, once again, been left at the altar. The gunmen's boat goes up with a satisfying roar, bodies and debris a flaming fountain pattering into the water without so much as a piece of shrapnel coming near him. Over and done, so fast there's not even time for a sweat to break out (though he imagines Bodie and Doyle up on shore have probably been sweating enough for all of them.)

Over and done. He lives to fight another day, and as he takes his seat in the boat again, he feels the dismay roll through him like the empty slam of a church door in the face of a rejected suitor.

When the black car breaks through the shrubbery and the bullets begin to fly, he knows. He takes the time to run a quick hand over his hair before he turns the boat toward the riverbank.

The bride is here, in all her mad and tattered glory, and Shotgun Tommy goes to consummate his marriage at last.


End file.
